Tag: Nature

The gang goes North: Part 7.2- Kenai Peninsula (West side)

.Reading time 15 minutes.

July 21-25

Not shockingly, we left Seward the morning of the 21st in the midst of a rain shower. Heading north along the Seward Highway, then splitting off west along the Sterling Highway, our surroundings changed from mountainous to rolling forested flats. Homer sits at the end of the Sterling Highway, and “The Spit” stretches a handful of miles out into Kachemak Bay, only few hundred yards wide and marks the end of the road- as far south on the Peninsula as a car can take you.

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The gang goes North: Part 7.1- Kenai Peninsula (Seward)

.Reading time 15 minutes.

July 17-20

Rain again. We slept in at Porcupine Campground in Hope, hoping it would dry up outside before we started packing. It didn’t.

Jamie finalized a blog post as we huddled under our awning. We’d be heading further south in the Kenai, to Seward, so we grabbed coffee at Kayak Coffee Co in town to give our bodies a little extra fuel. I spotted a guy wearing a Bills hat under a pavilion beside the coffee shop’s parking lot.

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The gang goes North: Part 3.2 – detour from the AlCan, Klondike edition.

.Reading time 13 minutes.

June 30-July 2

“…we were planning on heading south on the Alcan  from Whitehorse. Is the northern way to Dawson worth it?”

“Oh man, it’s a beautiful drive. Lots of construction, sure, but the tundra parts of the drive are incredible, and so is the Top of the World Highway.”

It felt like we’d had a similar conversation with more than a couple folks along the route through BC and the Yukon in prior days. So we pivoted from our plans.

Leaving Whitehorse, YT, the Alaska Highway heads southwest, then northwest to Delta Junction, AK. The Klondike Highway moves northwest to Dawson City, and the Top of the World Highway swings you back down to meet up with the Alaska Highway prior to Tok, AK. That’ still a couple hours east of Delta Junction. A choose your own adventure scenario.

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The gang goes North: Part 3.1

.Reading time 22 minutes.

June 24-29

The Alaska Highway: Dawson Creek, BC to Whitehorse, YT

“Name’s Jim Connors,” said our neighbor at the Dawson Creek Mile ‘0’ Campground. The rolling hills and farms surrounding us reminded me of Upstate NY. It felt familiar, though so far away from home. 

An older gentleman with a hardened smile, Jim gave us the skinny on his upcoming northern journey. His beat up wood-paneled Chevy pickup hailed from Wyoming, as did Jim.

“I get 9 miles to the gallon in that thing, and the front tank doesn’t play nice with ethanol. I’ll try to keep the back tank good and full, but that’ll mean stopping every 120 miles or so.”

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The gang goes North: Part 2

.Reading time 13 minutes.

June 19-23

Passports, check. Rabies vaccination card, check.

“Anything to declare?”

“Just a couple beers left in the fridge, two cans of beer spray. Some raw meat, a couple multi tools and a hatchet.”

The border agent went through their questions methodically, making sure we didn’t slip up about our doings in Canada.

From Camano Island in northern Washington, we’d be making our way onto the Sea-to-Sky highway north of Vancouver.

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Seattle to Santa Barbara: Part 1- Oregon Coast

.Reading time 16 minutes.

February 8-13

We got a late start on the 8th. Hoping to have left town by late morning, our plans got held up by one thing or another, and we set out around 2pm. I punched in a campground we were hoping to get to in Oregon, but immediately knew that was out of the question. A tractor trailer had rolled over on I-5 along our route, and detours made our trip a couple hours longer.

Have a plan, but be flexible.

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April, in a nutshell.

.Reading time 16 minutes.

My apologies as we’ve gotten away from our usual ~2 week blog post drop. Things have been busy, lots of moving parts, as we enjoy our last month here in the American Southwest and plan for the next location.

But let’s get to it.

The Mogollon Rim makes up the southern escarpment of the Colorado Plateau, and spans much of northern and northeast Arizona and into New Mexico. Its a dramatic climb from 4-5,000 feet above sea level up to around 7-8,000 ft. Tall stands of pine blanket the area, a sight seemingly surprising to those not familiar with the varied geographies of the 48th state.

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Little trips, big adventures

.Reading time 12 minutes.

February 19-March 12

Over the next week or so, Jamie Charley and I spent most of our time working (or going to daycare) and doing local things in the valley. We did a couple evening hikes, both in the Superstitions and at South Mountain, checked out a gym offering a free month membership to healthcare workers, ran the nearby trails and roads, and grabbed dinner with our friends Maggie and Brandon. We kept busy, but didn’t make any trips out of town.

We’d picked out a camping spot near Roosevelt Lake for Monday the 27th, about a 2 hour’s drive northeast of Phoenix. Taking an off-road route about 30 miles through the Four Peaks Wilderness, we passed countless mounds of crumbled rock, hundreds of feet high, and broken saguaros, ripped apart by the aridity and baking in the relentless sunshine. We skirted the trailhead for Brown’s Peak, the tallest of the Four Peaks that make up the Valley’s eastern horizon.

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Settling in, getting out

.Reading time 8 minutes.

January 22- February 7

After unloading the car at our new home, a process that now takes maybe an hour at most, we picked up dinner and drove over to Kaivan’s to visit. He’d done a cross country road trip back west after spending a couple months in Binghamton in the fall and we hadn’t seen him since early September when we left New York. It was nice to catch up, though Charley was a bit confused as to why Uncle Kaivan was here in Arizona and not in New York.

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Tahoe

.Reading time 14 minutes.

January 11 – 15

The day had come to leave our lovely little abode. It’s always sad to leave when our contracts are up, but I found Santa Barbara to be especially difficult to leave.

“Why the hell are we leaving?!” Jamie and I would ask each other. The hospital had offered to extend our contracts a while back, but we declined, as we were already set on heading to Arizona. It was a special time in SB, but eventually it had to end. 

We packed up our car in typical Tetris fashion, sure to leave ample space for Queen Charley’s throne in the back seat, complete with a bed and only the softest and comfiest blankets.

So Monday morning, when all the preparations were set, we punched Lake Tahoe (specifically, Stateline, NV) into the GPS and left Santa Barbara in our rearview.

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